Best Man for the Job

Room doors opened along the hallway as guests came out. “Is there a fire?”

“Is that the fire alarm?”

Callan brushed through the people as he headed for the emergency exit.

Impressed, Eryn looked at him. “You did that so more people would be around to identify the people who took Daniel.” The move was clever and she instantly respected it. She hadn’t thought of that, but she would definitely file it away. “Those guys will dump the masks and coveralls, but they can’t dump the hostage. You’re hoping you can get an ID from a bystander.”

Callan glared at her, then he opened the emergency exit door and dragged her through. Traversing the stairs was a lot trickier in heels than simply keeping up with Callan. She stumbled and fell repeatedly, always bumping up against that rock-hard back just ahead of her. Moving swiftly, he grabbed her again and again, righting her and keeping her moving. Her feet ached with the constant stress of navigating the steps and she hoped she didn’t turn an ankle.

The bachelor party had been on the fourth floor. Four flights of stairs later, Eryn thought they were going to enter the lobby again. Instead, Callan continued the descent into the underground parking garage.

“The elevators stop at the first floor.” Eryn turned the corner on the landing and headed down the stairs after Callan. The parking garage door was straight ahead.

“Did they plan on taking the elevator?”

“I don’t know.”

Callan shook his head. “They wouldn’t have taken the elevators. Not with Daniel. He’d be too easy to identify, and then the men who had taken him could be identified as well.”

Eryn knew that was true. Hotel security kept cameras in all the elevators. She looked at Callan’s profile, so hard it could have been carved from granite, and wondered who he was and how he knew all the things he did.

He was calm and in control. Not only that, he wasn’t even breathing hard from the pell-mell rush down the stairs. He reached for the knob and opened the door.

Car engines and voices echoed inside the cavernous parking garage. The temperature changed immediately from cool to muggy despite the fact that night had fallen over Vegas. The lows in August usually were in the seventies.

While Callan came to a dead stop and looked around like a hound on the hunt, Eryn took a deep breath filled with carbon monoxide and burned oil. Callan pulled her around to look at him.

“What are they driving?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where are they taking Daniel?”

“Look, you’ve got this all wrong. I’m not—”

Thirty yards away, the side door of a cargo van slid open with a grating shrill. Interior light from the vehicle spilled out onto the parking garage and lit up Daniel Steadman and his captors. The men still wore the black coveralls. The van gaped emptily as one of the men shoved Daniel inside.

Eryn lifted the cell, pointed it at the van, and started taking digital images. The phone was expensive. She hoped the camera utility was, too, but it wouldn’t compare to a 35mm SLR. Still, there might be something recoverable later. She only managed three images in quick succession before Callan jerked her into motion.

The men climbed into the van, but not before one of them spotted Callan and Eryn. He pointed and called out a warning to one of the other men. He grabbed for the machine pistol hanging from a sling on his side.

“What are you doing?” Eryn pulled at her arm, certain they were about a heartbeat from getting shot. “Getting Daniel.”

“You’re going to get shot. You’re going to get us shot.”

Twenty yards out, Callan never broke his stride. Eryn had seen few men with that kind of single-minded intensity. Her father was one of them, and she respected him. But running into a group of armed men was suicidal.

“They didn’t shoot anyone upstairs. Maybe they’re not shooters.”

“They will shoot you. They’ll shoot me.”

Callan’s grip tightened on her wrist. “I thought you said you didn’t know these guys.”

“I don’t.”

“Then you don’t know if they’re really willing to kill someone.”

Two of the men lifted their machine pistols from inside the van. The engine caught and the driver roared backward, then braked forcefully to a stop. The men took aim, cursing loudly at the driver.

Unwilling to run into a hail of bullets to prove Callan wrong, Eryn kicked his leg out from under him and threw herself against him. She was surprised when the ploy worked. They fell hard onto the parking garage’s cement floor just as bullets struck sparks from the smooth surface and whined off into the parking garage. Bullets hammered out glass from a nearby Suburban and punched holes in the body.

The impact knocked the wind from Eryn’s lungs. She lay helpless and watched as the van roared straight at where she lay on top of Callan. The headlights flicked on and the vehicle looked like some hollow-eyed monster bearing down on them. The gunners inside the van kept firing.

Bullets slammed into nearby vehicles. Pockmarks appeared in spiderweb windows. Sparks leaped from fenders as some of the rounds ricocheted. Car alarms screeched to strident life and a light show from the stricken vehicles ignited. A cry of pain from another area of the garage caught Eryn’s attention.

Lying on her side, Eryn tried to push herself up and reach for Callan, certain they would never get clear. He roped an arm around her and flipped himself on top of her. His hard body pressed against her and for a moment her senses swam with the presence of him. Despite the motor smells beaten into the garage, she smelled him, inhaled the musk mixed with some kind of cologne that seemed familiar but was so different on him. His free hand slid up her spine and cupped the back of her head protectively as he rolled.

Eryn realized he was trying to maneuver them from the path of the advancing van but didn’t know if there was enough time. She lay pliantly against him and wrapped her arms under and over his, holding on so tight it was like they were one body. They rolled once more and the van’s tires sped by only inches away. The heat of the vehicle and the stink of the exhaust washed over them as another fusillade of bullets chopped into nearby cars.

Stunned, not believing she was still alive—or in Callan’s arms, Eryn stared up into his slate-gray eyes. Then he released her and surged to his feet like a big cat, the motion so smooth she couldn’t see the parts of it. He was suddenly just standing.

Eryn sat up, not sure if she could trust her trembling knees. The adrenaline still flooded her system and left her shaky. She’d never come so close to being killed. She looked across the garage and saw a guy on the ground. Just a tourist in the wrong place at the wrong time. Miraculously, she’d managed to hang on to the cell phone and it wasn’t broken. She called 911 to get an ambulance to him, even knowing he wasn’t alive.

At the end of the parking garage, the van cut the corner sharply and pulled into the exit lane. The tires shrilled against the pavement.

For a moment Callan stared after the fleeing vehicle, hard and cold as stone. Then he wheeled on her. “You let them get away.”

Chapter 3

Eryn stared at Callan, not believing what she’d just heard. Angry, clad in a skimpy costume, still afraid and buzzing with adrenaline, she stood on trembling legs. Despite their size difference and the volatile circumstances, she refused to back down from him.

“I let them get away?” Eryn’s words came out harsh and angry as she leaned toward Callan. “You ass! I just saved your life!”

“I had everything under control.”

“What were you going to do? Tackle that van?” Eryn snorted sarcastically, her anger momentarily overriding her fear. “I’m sure that would have worked out really well for you. They’d have peeled you off the grill. But that would have made the car easier to identify. Maybe I should have let you go.”

The planes of his face hardened. “Who are those guys? Who took Daniel?”

“I don’t know!” Eryn sipped a deep breath and looked at the phone. She pulled up the shots she’d taken, then triggered the email function and sent them to her phone back in the hotel room and to her home computer.

“Are you calling them?” Callan reached for the phone.

Eryn turned sideways and threw her shoulder into the big man’s arms to block the grab. “No. I’m securing evidence. Back off.”

“What evidence?”

This time his grab was too quick for her and he snatched the phone from her hand while she’d been focused on sending the images. She resisted the impulse to try to get the phone back. Unless she had a baseball bat or a Taser, that wasn’t going to happen until he was ready to hand it over.